Stain On Your Soul
by JayRain
Summary: DAWC Halloween Challenge! Loghain puts on a good front, but maybe his choice at Ostagar haunts him more than he lets on.  And maybe it's because dead or not, Cailan won't let him forget it. Title from the DA random prompt generator, M for graphic imagery.


**Author's Note: **It's Halloween time! Blighted Angel issued a challenge in the DAWC forums to write a gruesome, haunting, gory, what-have-you graphic tale of terror for it. Her response, "Even in Death", is haunting, sad, and filled with awesomely dark imagery and you should read it. Here is my response to the challenge, and likely one of the last things I'll be posting between now and December 1st since NaNo will be devouring me. As for this piece, I haven't been watching too much Walking Dead lately. Noooo, not at aaaallll.

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><p>The trees are bare skeletons reaching for the sky like hands coming out of graves. The ground is littered with corpses and body parts strewn about like a messy child's toys. Loghain gingerly steps around a torso leaking guts, the legs off to the side somewhere. Suddenly the torso reaches out for him, and he jumps back in horrified surprise. The milky white eyes stare at him while the loose jaw flaps and the rotting teeth click in the silence.<p>

Loghain jumps back and the corpse crawls after him, but he's got his legs and he's much faster. He runs for higher ground and leans against a cold stone pillar. As he looks around at the sallow sky and colorless field of human debris, he recognizes it as… Ostagar?

His heart picks up and he takes a deep breath to organize his thoughts. He closes his eyes and tries to consciously bury his memories of Ostagar alongside those from West Hill and White River. But when he opens his eyes again the air reeks of rot and decay and he is surrounded by swaying, moaning corpses in the various liveries of Ferelden.

Atrophying bodies shamble ever closer and the scent of death is overwhelming. His eyes water and he wants to vomit. A man bearing the white laurels of Highever reaches out to him, staring into his eyes with empty sockets; the eyeballs dangle by bloody sinews, bumping against the cheekbones over which grayish skin is stretched so tightly it's tearing. Loghain backs up and finds himself against a wall with the dead closing in on him.

The sea of the walking dead parts. Bodies stumble to the sides, creating a corridor of death for as far as he can see. There is a thump as an arm hits the ground; the soldier to whom it belonged looks down with one bleeding eye, then shrugs with his remaining shoulder. The dead men closest to Loghain scratch at their faces, peeling desiccated skin off in strips and chunks, revealing moonlight-bright white bone beneath.

In one fluid motion they all drop to one knee, half-exposed skulls dropping chins to hollow chests, eyeless sockets staring at the bloodied ground. Loghain stares to the end of the aisle created by the dead. He stands straight, jaw clenched and lips pursed, arms crossed over his chest. He tells himself the walking dead aren't so bad, especially compared to Orlesians; though his watering eyes force him to admit that the dead smell worse. Then they move their heads as one (even though the motion makes one frail neck snap and the skull drops to the ground). They look, and Loghain follows their line of sight.

He looks west and there, against a pallid sun, he sees a certain shape. At first it seems a speck; then a mist; and as it draws nearer, it takes on humanlike movements. It doesn't move in jerky shambling steps the way the dead do. It almost seems to float, a shadow backlit by the sallow sun. And always the dead give it reverence.

As it nears the mist clears away. Loghain is cold, colder than he's ever been in his life, if this is indeed still part of his life.

The golden armor is gone, long-since looted by the darkspawn who routed the armies and defiled the valley with their evil taint. But there is no mistaking Cailan Theirin, nose-to-nose with Loghain.

Scraps of clothing cling to his torso. The rotting flesh reveals splintered ribs and innards reduced to ooze that seeps out. Shards of bone peek out of his bare arms. His graying skin is stretched over his skull; his lank blond hair hangs in tangles and clumps. His lips stretch back in a mocking smile and though his face is thin and hollow, as shadowed and sere as this parody of Ostagar, his eyes are still piercing, bright and sparkling blue.

He reaches out an atrophied hand and claps his father-in-law on the shoulder. "Loghain. It's so good to see you." His voice is not the hollow, emotionless moan of the dead, who remain bowed to one knee in reverence for their king. "I worried when you didn't show up on the battlefield. I feared the worst for you."

Loghain meets those eyes, so alive and incongruous in the decaying face. "Yes, well. Sometimes strategies don't go according to plan."

"Is that what happened, then." Cailan's smile is a mockery of pleasant. He extends his hand and bids Loghain to follow him, and though the Teyrn does not want to, his feet move of their own volition. He and Cailan walk down the corridor of dead soldiers all bowed to one knee, some collapsing into piles of bone and rotted flesh as they go. Loghain is disgusted to realize he hardly notices the scent of decay and death anymore. "You do grow used to it after a time," Cailan tells him, reading his mind. "I know we all have." The nearest corpses nod. One nods so vigorously several teeth spew out into the path. Cailan neatly sidesteps them and shakes his head with a smile, a gesture that is so familiarly Maric, and yet so disturbing coming from the corpse.

"Look around you, Loghain," Cailan says in that sunny tone. "Look at Ostagar: our last stronghold against the darkspawn." He inhales deeply through what's left of his nose. "Glorious."

Loghain is speechless because Cailan is as much a fool in death as he was in life. "As your Majesty says," he manages.

They continue to walk; the lines of the dead shift to make a winding, curving path from which there is no deviation and no escape. Cailan smiles down at a few, lays a hand with only two finger bones left on another shoulder. "Come now, Loghain, you don't believe that. You never did."

"Majesty?"

Cailan grins. "We both know how you felt about me. We both know you hated my style of ruling."

"I am but a servant of the crown…"

"Look about you, Loghain. I'm sure everyone here would agree you are the crown's best servant of all." The dead look up: thousands of pairs of eyes, and even more pairs of eyeless sockets, turn on him and Loghain feels the weight of so many dead stares. "Look at the ruin of Ostagar and see what you've accomplished!" Cailan spreads his arms wide and twirls like a dancer beneath the sickly sky, his cracked lips pulled into a wide smile. "The people of Ferelden must surely thank you."

At that, heads nod and a moaning murmur sweeps through the endless stream of the dead.

Cailan turns to face Loghain, those piercing blue eyes commanding the Teyrn's attention. "Look at your legacy, Loghain," he says, his voice low and a rumble in his damaged chest. "While you will tell Ferelden, and my wife, that my vainglorious foolishness destroyed the country, I want you to take a good look at the thousands of lives you destroyed—and the thousands more you _will_ destroy." One hand, sharp and bony, grips Loghain by the back of the neck and forces him to look around. "I can forgive you for killing me," he says.

"If I remember correctly, Majesty, it was an ogre that killed you," Loghain says through clenched teeth.

Cailan shoves him to the ground; it is still wet with shed blood. Cailan kicks him in the ribs and he falls into one of the dead soldiers. Bony hands shove him back to the middle of the path and he sits in the blood, still warm, and stares up at the dead king. "I can forgive you for leaving me to die," Cailan says. "But not for leaving _them_ to die. Or choosing to let _them_ die." He spreads his arms wide and the dead rise with the sound of cracking bones and moaning and squishing in the bloody earth. Cailan backs away. "Enjoy your legacy, Teyrn Loghain," he says. "May Ostagar ever be a stain on your soul." Fog rolls in around him and he fades into the mist.

The rest of the dead, however, are very solid as they close in around Loghain. Bony hands reach for him; toothless jaws flap and try to bite at him. And though he kicks and punches and uses every technique for hand fighting he remembers, there are simply far too many, and he is drowning in blood and death.

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><p>Loghain woke and panicked, but realized it was only his twisted bed sheets holding him down. They were damp with cold sweat. He sniffed the air cautiously, but smelled only the dying embers of the fire, the chill stone, and always the faint scent of dog. He relaxed. Only a bad dream then. He would not let himself make it a big deal, even though the images were still vividly flashing through his racing mind; and though he willed it as hard as he could, the images would not leave him. Every time he closed his eyes he saw the dead and decaying bodies closing around him.<p>

With a sigh Loghain dressed in simple clothing and made his way to the study. The night was, at least, good for getting work done, what with everyone who would bother him abed. He unlocked the door and sniffed delicately. Something a bit off… maybe there was a dead rodent. He lit the fire place with his torch.

"Good evening, Loghain."

He spun around to see Cailan sitting at the desk, skin peeling off his cracked bones, a satisfied smile stretched over his skull, and his lively blue eyes sparkling in his dead face. Loghain dropped his torch on the hearth and ran.

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><p><em>"Now that? Was well done."<em>

_Cailan combed his fingers through his hair and grinned. "Thank you." He bowed slightly. "I worried that it was overkill, but I think he needed that."_

_Maric nodded. "You're absolutely right." He clapped his son on the shoulder. "Though I'm glad you're back to normal. Dead really isn't a good look on you." Cailan grinned, and Maric returned the gesture. "I have to say, I am impressed with you, son."_

_Cailan beamed. "I learned everything from you."_

_Maric nodded. "Come on. Let's go drink. A lot." And father and son set off along the never ending, perpetually twilit paths of the Fade._


End file.
